To have the management of the mind is a great art, and it may be attained in a considerable degree by experience and habitual exercise... Let him take a course of chemistry, or a course of rope-dance, or a course of any thing to which he is inclined at the time. Let him contrive to have as many retreats for his mind as he can, as many things to which it can fly from itself.

Be not too hasty to trust or to admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels, but they live like men.

Unintelligible language is a lantern without a light.

Advice is offensive, not because it lays us open to unexpected regret, or convicts us of any fault which had escaped our notice, but because it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves; and the officious monitor is persecuted with hatred, not because his accusation is false, but because he assumes that superiority which we are not willing to grant him, and has dared to detect what we desired to conceal.

Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct

Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.

That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments...